Who is going to be the leading force in the middle east come if you configure the policy because i have a hard time where are they in yemen and going after isis where are they in afghanistan come against us were with us. And i think theres a reason why they did so well for so many years in the business. We are not good trade deals. If i look at the trade deals that weve done i think tp p. Is a joke and there are people that are better by laterally. Our trade deal goes to show what weve done in the last ten years. Weve done three. Colombia, panama, south korea. China has done 30 including a 30 billiondollar deal with ukraine. Including many of the people we would never deal with. So i think that its a very dangerous precedent. I dont think we have nearly what we think we have. Theres no shame thats one mans opinion. That was a great talk. Very disturbing. It seems like there is so much to be done. But as we all leave this room what would you like us as individuals to take with us what can we do tax we have it. There is no more talented organism on the planet and we are. We are the descriptors. Anybody that doesnt think we have descriptors, go to the Silicon Valley to the places in new york where theyre thinking about new things. There are new businesses cropping up. A friend of mine in town has just discovered a clever place to be is in cyber. Cybersecurity and so you listen to the officials and talk not to the coal mine manager but to the person that is facing the cold and one of the things i found is that cybersecurity is exploding. One of the biggest banks in the world he told me they spent almost nothing on cybersecurity and this year they are evidently of dollars getting warmed up so up single to play by every country and i will tell you hes the congressman that sits in the seat overseas and he has been chalked by the arrogance of some that have come to see him particularly the ceos in the power grid. And by the way, i am no terrorist but if i was going to start somewhere the power grid is sitting there and we are not doing enough. Thats one example. There are many others. We dominate things like digital platforms. If you look at the Fastest Growing type of job outside of this country is temporary that everything is going to be done on an as needed basis. Everything in the business to take what we need when we needed. We need to know how to do that. We know more about financing and about Digital Financial technology. Banks and Insurance Companies will be disrupted like weve never seen before. Thats not going to happen in japan were russia. I would take the confidence that we have. What we have to do as individuals to see that talent come help those kids that have not completed their college or Junior College to complete. Theres a simple example she stopped going up because she didnt want her to agree that the woman that used to take care of her kids couldnt afford babysitting. There are people out there that are doing exactly what we want them to do. They are working hard and paying their bills and their rent and we have set up little obstacles for them and we are being uncaring and i will give you one more example. There is a woman 40yearsold in new york who makes 38,000. She has a nephew that lives with her. Was with her. She pays her rent every month. Her job is she is a special needs teacher in the public schools. Shes doing exactly what we want her to do. How did i encounter this woman . The Apartment Building she lived any type first. They were flooded and therefore uninhabitable. She didnt have the kind of w2 that would enable her to go out and get a new apartment. She didnt have that to my friend Security Deposit or the ability to take her child and go and come up with the three months and go and rent another apartment and so i first met this beautiful woman who was a caring special needs teacher in a homeless shelter. What we are doing is creating obstacles for people whose notion is that 40 are takers is completely full. Of course there are people that the vast majority want to do something. We have kids off to go to school what is the one thing that each of us can do tax thanks very much. [applause] now on booktv, undocumented traces the journey in of the u. S. As an undocumented immigrant from the homeless shelter to the Ivy Ivy League interviewed by the New York Times immigration reporter liz robbins. Danel, your memoir has come out at a crucial time for reform in the United States. What is going on in new york or a privileged about papers teach politicians, voters and 11 million undocumented people in this country about the meaning of success and perseverance . Thank you for the question and i am so delighted to have the memoir come out at a time when these conversations are being had and will continue to be had for years to come. My memoir as i see it hopes to make several contributions to the United States. And the very first is to show how we are already contributing so much in all walks of life. Ive had a unique experience of making my way through some of the best educational institutions in this country but of course they have a highlevel and they are being sidelined or marginalized because of the discourse. I am not thinking of donald trump much in the news these days im thinking about that the undocumented immigrants as being illegal, people that are beyond the pale of the law and is at the very core of my memoir is an attempt to engage in the conversation into the undocumented are contributing in many different communities across the United States and all walks of life and our poised to make a significant contribution to the u. S. Society but the key is if we allow the legal status that will prevent them from living marginalized. Host and the drumming of the background music talk a little bit about the beginning of the life in new york when you came at age four how you were battling in english, spanish, the Dominican Republic that was your experience growing up in new york . My favorite memories are all of this amazing sense of discovery. The realization that i was living in a place that was much different. It came out with something peculiar, something not quite right about the immigrant situation. And even though i was trying to piece together the scraps of conversation i was having with my parents i understood that there was something going on that affected us and my parents couldnt secure earlier works of the memory is in the city as pleasant as they are i think about walking with my parents and discovering the neighborhood they are also infiltrated by a sense of anxiety that came in the knowledge that parents were not able to keep a steady employment or to keep paying the rent. And as and so all of that contributed to this sense of unease in this. Spin again in fact your father decided that he could no longer really produce the living he wanted in new york he couldnt get a steady Employment Security pact to the Dominican Republic but it was your moms decision to keep you and your younger brother here. When she talked to your Kindergarten Teacher and learn how well youre doing, that was one aspect that made her decide weve got to keep the family here. Talk about that decision that she needed to keep you here despite being undocumented. s decision evolved over several years and had to do with the conversations my mom and my dad had with my Kindergarten Teacher or they learned was caught with her name by the way . Guest i had the old Kindergarten Teachers and then there were others at my school in the bronx and then continuing in the first grade there were more conversations with my first grade teacher and one of the things that came out. And ive been taking the possibility of learning the language and i increased it and i seem to be very at ease in the classroom and so my mom was inspired by these conversations. It would be great for my children to have a u. S. Education. It would be wonderful for them to be exposed. The full range of the opportunity is available here. My dad was very worried because one of the difficulties that have prevented itself in the issue of not being able to steady employment and the consequence of being able to support us in the way that we wanted to individually things came to a head. He told my mom he wanted to return and she said i think that you should stay and we are going to forge a life on our own in new york city. And i will make it so that my children have the best Educational Opportunity available for them here. Host do you ever resent the decision because it makes life so difficult for you. In the benefit of hindsight it was perplexing if i could fully process the implication of that. I didnt know if and when he might reconsider and come back. And i didnt know at the time i couldnt have known at the time. The determination she had conveyed it to my father that we were going to stay no matter what. It was only in the passage of time that i realized she was absolutely serious. There was nothing that was going to make her mad. Shes also now would lead us to believe in spite of the obstacles that we would overcome, her children would be able to forge a new life for themselves that outlined in the decision of what we could accomplish. Host at the same time that you were in shelters and in chinatown you are at every turn finding books and making them part of your world whether it be rescuing books are finding that a book that was really life changing initial tour. The talk about the book only live in ancient greece and rome. What did that say to you as a 9yearold child . I had an attachment for the feel of books reading them from the early age but this begins to manifest itself when i was six, seven, eight because we didnt have money to buy books. When we moved into the shelters with them initially i was picking up these history books and the files of the countries i wanted to travel but at some point. But then i came across this book of how people live in ancient greece and rome and from these pages i was struck by the sense that this was a world that was completely unlike the world that i knew and there were people from contemporary new york and they spoke these languages but this book gave me the sense of a legacy transmitted from the culture to our own culture so we have to think what does this mean. And that planted the seed for my interest in the study of ancient history, the study of latin and it helped me on the path. That is Pretty Amazing when you think about the fact that you are now in academics. Youve chosen a discipline that is not only rare it is pretty a satiric. So we have that to thank. What do you love about the classics . How do they speak to you even on this day . I moved to one state and it was ultimately converged. Of the inspired teaching that i had my went from does have integrated to the end of high school but the languages, learning the languages but he quickly with the capacity to approach these ancient authors still today. Such is the poetry of virtual or the contentious prose. But then id like i got there was another dimension to this. So it was a sort of overgrown following going down all these different rabbit holes. But i found that in poverty to do event covers you to do this because it impacts the serious culture. You have to think about what it means to study history. What makes something 2,000 years ago that different. How do you measure time, all these questions. The final aspect of the most significant aspects now is seeing how the legacy of the greek and roman world is so much of what we do now for example. In the public there is a continuous preoccupation with the greek and roman path as it is shaped in the political discourse. This is what i hoped to convey to my students. And theres also an image of the immigration, going back to my first question. I know that we had discussions as most people do. Maybe you can talk about the ordination and what the word of the ancient survey of foreigners in how you and how you can relate that with today. When i was in my early teenage years i was very fond of copying down the cool text even if i couldnt figure out what it is about those texts. But i would try to make my way through the apollo phoenician war and this is when i was in the old school. But i was still very much in this historically obsessed part of my class. Why do they fight each other, i guess i should read that. So there is a fantastic oration delivered by one of the speeches delivered near the beginning of the Peloponnesian War and one of the things that he took as focuses on his book makes it not special and one of the planes that he lingers on is the idea, the reality so it has been known as the place that would engage in but there was so much more that present data at various points in my life. For example if talks about how it doesnt make one so in that point in time it was forging the sense of identity that revolves around a certain intellectualism that isnt as great a deal. And so in reading this and thinking about how they reflected the preoccupations there is an understanding of the pattern as i was growing into my own sense. Host i always feel in talking to you, danel, but ive been that ive been in a seminar. We have so much to talk about anything from history to philosophy and ancient greece its very fun. But you talk about being intellectual and your intellectual pursuit. Youre a teenager and youre also living in an area that isnt found for intellectual pursuits and a lot of your friends as you write in the books dont really appreciate your intellectualism. So how do you bridge these worlds by now in your biography weve gotten youtube egypt into this elite high school because of the scholarship actually because of the reading of the history books that was discovered by the art teacher but you are also commuting between the two worlds. How do you do that, do you take off the cape, do you go into a phone booth, how do you rectify your personality . Guest one day address code but i was worried about Walking Around a blazer and tie in my neighborhood i that i would get jumped and so every time i walked to the subway station on my way to school i would make sure not to have my tie on and then when i came back and got off at the subway station before walking home i would take my tie off. But in addition to that, there was one of the complicated interplay and how i begin to understand the aspiration against the backdrop of my trafficking within the two worlds. As one of so one of the first things i realized his special place but placed a tremendous emphasis on this kind of outward intellectualism and this was not the social currency of the school. You have to show that you are knowledgeable to talk about them but it was ostentatious and talking about them so you have had to calibrate the presentation on the one hand, it has been offthecuff. I picked up this book and i read it and i know its content but on the other hand you can go out to one of your friends and say oh well i read plato last night and they would lock you. Host which friends . Guest host which ones would you say that . Guest i would say that to the friends of collegiate but point is they dont have to say it in a particular way. I realized when i was going back to my Old Neighborhood there was a different one i was going to. At first i thought i kept the intellectual. They wouldnt get that stuff. But then it took me many years and they understood that side. But that was the realization that sat in while after we had grown up together. But in fact not only have they had tremendous respect for that but in their own way, they have tried to communicate and convey that what i was doing was cool to them even though they seized me at the top. It was a a back and forth of figuring out the two different ones that we are all operating under the assumption versus going back to my neighborhood and feeling that i could talk about these texts yet everyone knew i was going through this fancy school where we read all of these and abandoned their own way they wanted to talk about them with me that we are looking for a vocabulary in a way of doing so and i was looking for that for a very subatomic the more confusing aspects. Host vocabulary, i love how you bring that word up because the memoir has a really interesting juxtaposition that at first i found it jarring. But then talking to you i now understand youve got slammed from the third and highprofile academic speaking and writing. And you blend them. So youve got curse words and youve got discussions of sex and socrates. Its quite a fascinating juxtaposition. Tell me why you decided to write in two different ways. I felt that was the only way i could capture my own struggle in the social world and i became fairly buried in a memoir about were i to set the writing in one tone or register i would be doing a disservice. So much of the experience of my childhood revolved around questions of language, questions of mastery or the learning of language. So, one of the many opposites i wrestled with when i was a teenager and then at the belt is when do you switch . When do you transition from one particular to another . When do you shift into why do you shift . This is one that i thought i had to think about, but it became over time unconscious because there is no point at which there is a reflection that is far from my mind but im always thinking about it. But we were doing it pretty easily. So that gave me a sense of empowerment and pride. But i also realized it was difficult for some people in my life to understand and appreciate this. So i i have friends on one hand that would the one hand that would say thats neat that you can do this and they would play this game with me. I had College Friends who were very fascinated by this but then i realized there was another dimension and i talk about this in one of the episodes in the book that focuses on one that i dated a very briefly. There was an aspect that i realized also posed some challenges by the navigation of identity. So what would it have been in the speech pattern . Wasnt that i felt so distinctive from one to the other but for anyone else to do that would strike me as somehow inappropriate so i had to make my peace with this. The realization not everyone would accept my linguistic game at the level in level in the sensibility that i was approaching it very i was approaching it as a way to make myself feel empowered with by the kind of identity that i saw. But other people have